


United We Stand, Divided We Fall

by crappyfriend



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: First Contact War, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-09-28 23:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20434010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crappyfriend/pseuds/crappyfriend
Summary: Humanity has long thought of themselves as the only intelligent species left in the galaxy. With the only knowledge that we have of aliens existing being the ruins and clues that they left behind. Today we know that aliens exist and they wish only for our destruction. Humanity is more divided than it has ever been but many believe that our greatest strength comes from us uniting against any threat. We can only hope that it will not be too late when we do.





	1. Chapter 1

Lin Li was currently observing the Tuningfork through multiple sensors from her ship.

Today was her once in a lifetime chance to study the gigantic object in front of her. After all study on them was banned and they were either removed from the system or quarantined there wasn't much chance these days. She understood the risks associated with them and the mysterious substance that powered it, but there was so much to learn.

There was a time where such a thing was legal and research was actively encouraged. Two planets being wiped out as a Tuningfork exploded changed that. The aftermath led to research being banned and the substance, known as Zero for its interesting properties were quarantined and stored in secure facilities. 

Rules and regulation were made and surprisingly few nations were against them, she found out only later that this had been planned for a long time. The incident only accelerated its implementation.

All this meant that if she ever wanted to study them she would have to either find a way through illegal means, which would most likely get her arrested or wait for the perfect opportunity. 

And today was the day.

Through some of her contacts, she had acquired information that Shanxi was looking for experts that could help them with a newly discovered Tuningfork. 

Uninhabited systems that turned out to have a Tuningfork were quarantined and put under observation. Systems were they only discovered it after the colony have reached a certain size had multiple choices they could make as long as they didn't try to tamper with it.

Some people would simply do nothing as they didn't have enough resources. Other's would abandon the place by either by mass evacuation or with assistance from other nations. The third option was to simply move the entire thing out and detonate it once it has gone far enough, few can afford that option.

Shanxi was a recently founded nation, only ten years old, and lives on the very frontier which means that they don't have enough to move it. They aren't small enough to simply evacuate either so their only option is to wait until they find a solution.

A solution she is confident she can find.

Lin was fortunate that she was one of the last ships that came through the Worm Gate before it shut down for maintenance. She felt even more fortunate when she found out that she was the only researcher that has showed.

She had only a limited amount of time to convince them that she was the right person to hire before other people would come. She was most likely not the only person that would be interested in something like this.

Scheduling a meeting with the government was easy with her credentials, the hard part came when she wanted them to let her study it now. Worm Gate maintenance would usually last up to a month which meant she needed to use the little time she had as much as possible.

The conversation went back and forth for an hour with basically the same thing being said in a dozen different ways.

That there wasn't enough incentive for them to go against the treaties they have signed, for her to satisfy her curiosity. When the conversation looked like it would end with her not getting the job, she was forced to use something she wanted to save for later.

Ever since she graduated she had used most of her time to track down every piece of data she could get about Tuningforks. Every lead, no matter how small, she went after, more often than not ending up empty-handed.

It was on a trip like this that she found an old paper written from before the ban. A linguist had found a vague reference to an object that could be described as similar to a Tuningfork and the word 'transportation' in a Prothean text. The linguist had ultimately decided that they had translated something wrong and archived the paper for later.

For Li, it was the answer she finally needed for all the other bits of data to make sense. 

That the Tuningforks weren't just bombs or weapons as most people believed, but some kind of transportation system similar to our Worm Gates.

It was only a theory since she hadn't been able to prove it and didn't really want to use the information in case it would lead them to call her crazy and throwing her out. She was surprised when they didn't do that.

Instead, they called in an expert in xenolinguistics to confirm what she said. Even after their expert had confirmed that the translation was right they were still sceptical and would only let her go with an escort. 

She couldn't have cared less about that as she had finally gotten the chance she had waited years for.

A week later she was at the Tuningfork, this would be the fourth day that they would be studying it. The scans that have been done had already yielded more answers in four days than she was able to get in the last ten years.

She was in her assigned room in the ship thinking of the Nobel prizes she was eligible for when the alert came. It was a summon to the bridge.

On her way to the bridge, she could see several of the other crew members running with most of them in the direction of the bridge. She didn't think much about it until the alarm turned on which made her think that the activity and her being summoned to the bridge might be related.

At the bridge, she could see similar activity with the captain yelling out orders and crewmembers moving from station to station. She barely opened her mouth before the captain turned to her direction and practically shoved a datapad into her hands.

"Tell me that these numbers don't mean what I think they do?" The numbers she referred to looked to be scans of the Tuningfork taken at intervals.

Looking at Lin didn't see anything wrong with them as the numbers were at a normal level. It was only when she got to the scans taken the last two hours that they got strange. The scans showed a consistent rise of energy and it kept rising every second that she looked at it.

"It doesn't make any sense." They have only scanned it at this point, none of their scanners should be powerful enough to make the numbers she was seeing make sense.

Before she could think more about what this could mean, a light show started that was so intense that all activity on the bridge stopped. Most of them were thinking that this would be their death with the light show being the start of the explosion. Other people were admiring the light as it was quite beautiful.

When the light died down and the scans started to show that the energy levels were stabilising, many gave a sigh of relief. 

People had barely calmed down when a sight that they couldn't believe even when their scanners showed that it was true. A ship of an alien design had arrived just as the light had stopped being as intense. It was heavily damaged and leaked atmosphere in multiple places. The ship flew past the small fleet that had escorted Li here and kept going even as they could see the lights on the ship flickering on and off through the cameras.

If they weren't so focused on the one ship that sped past them, the rest of the fleet might have noticed that a fleet easily surpassing their's in both mass and firepower had arrived not far behind the first ship. The alien fleet had a design that looked as alien as the first one and looked almost new as it had none of the damages that one did.

For a second, Li hoped that the alien fleet would do the same as the first ship and simply ignore them. Those hopes were quickly crushed as the alien started firing on the ships closest to them.

Lin Li never thought much about how she would die, but dying at the hands of an alien fleet wasn't one of them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the prologue ends.

Rael'Zorah Vas Telari had a simple mission.

To activate a mass relay and scout for worlds that they could settle without the Council finding out. 

Activating one is forbidden but at this point they were desperate. Rael himself was actually one of the people that were first against the plan, it would be risking too much when they already have so little. Resources that could be better used for the reclamation of their home. Any further protest was cut off when the admiralty board sent him an information packet and told him to read.

The packet was filled with yearly reports from the last fifty years and what they showed filled him with despair.

The report revealed that the amount of food that the Liveships produced was getting lower, explaining why the rationing had been stricter than usual in the last few years. Trading for more wouldn't help as the number of ports that denied them service kept increasing. The conclusion at the end was that they might have a major food crisis if something drastic wasn't done.

Plans were already being made to cut the population, meaning that many couples would not be allowed a child.

That was ultimately made him accept the mission. His wife was currently pregnant and if the numbers were true it would mean that his people might never reclaim Rannoch. He had promised her and his unborn daughter that he would one day build a house for them there. 

Accepting the mission had led him to be assigned to the Telari as the second in command.

The Telari hadn't seen any proper action since the Krogan Rebellions. The Turian ship was found by the Flotilla completely by chance near an asteroid belt, the records revealed that it was damaged and abandoned towards the end of the war. 

Every crewmember consisted of volunteers as the mission could not be traced back to the Flotilla. They had rigged the ship to blow if they were discovered.

Relay 314 was the one that was chosen as they had acquired information that the next patrol wouldn't be in there for the next three months, time that they would use to scout beyond the relay. Once they were done they would send a messenger to bring the Flotilla through and go from there.

The journey will be tough as they will have to travel far before they can be certain that it would be safe to settle. 

The operation had been planned for months and every detail was meticulously planned. The preparations for activating the relay had been set and they still had more than two months before the next patrol would show up.

At least that was what they thought.

It was three hours into the night cycle when the ship detected a turian patrol fleet arriving in the system. The crew didn't panic as they had planned for this scenario. Their ship was painted with the markings of one of many raiders you could find out here. The blame would simply be put on pirates looking for something valuable on a relay.

Then the ship detected that the patrol fleet was at least four times as big as a normal one usually is and it was starting to feel like they had just flown into a trap. The message that they received moments later confirmed it

"It appears that our sources were correct, it looks like the suitrats weren't content with only unleashing the Geth upon the galaxy. They now want to risk another Rachni War by illegally activating a mass relay. If you do not initiate a call in the next five minutes then you will be destroyed." The turian captain said though it didn't sound like he would mind if they resisted. 

"Did anyone recognize the turian?" His captain asked as soon as the message was done playing. The question was answered moments later, the little time they had was already ticking down.

"I ran him through our database and found out that his name is Julilius Agotus. He is on our blacklist and isn't exactly known for taking prisoners." 

Which meant that he would probably not wait until the five minutes are done. They all knew that they couldn't be arrested as that would risk the Flotilla, which meant that they had only option to ensure that the Flotilla wouldn't be incriminated.

Rael sent a quick prayer to his ancestors to prepare for his arrival.

When the captain didn't give the order to initiate the self-destruct sequence and instead turned to him asking him a question that didn't make much sense.

"Are the preparations for activating the relay still in place?"

"Yes." The questions didn't make sense to ask now since the mission was already ruined. Why would they even ne-

Rael realized what his captain was planning and what she said next confirmed it.

"Activate the relay and send it our signal, we're going in as soon as it's ready."

Rael knew that his captain and everyone else on the ship knew that there was a reason you waited at least a week before you travelled through a mass relay. Stories of ships being lost or ending up on the other side with the ship irreparably damaged are common horror stories back home.

A mass relay always needed time for the 'corridor' to stabilize before anyone went through and that was common knowledge.

No one said a word about the order.

Rael activated the mass relay and was greeted by the lights of an active relay. He had sent the signal to the relay about the ship's mass and could see the massive rings around the core starting to spin.

They waited a painfully long minute as the patrol fleet closest ships started targeting us. The ship had entered the relay by the time the guns started firing and they were far away from the danger of the ships.

But not from the dangers of travelling through an unstable 'corridor', there was a reason that people waited.

As the lights flickered and the gravity stopped working, Rael thoughts went to his family back home. 


	3. Chapter 3

Jon Grissom's surgery had gone well with few complications.

It's been an hour since he woke up and his body felt almost ten years younger. Touching his leg, he no longer felt the hard and unyielding material of his bionic leg, but soft and sensitive skin. His other injuries from the war had also been healed after so long.

It had taken a long time for him to decide to grow a new leg, even longer to schedule the time necessary to attach it. The plan was to do it when Shanxi had finally stabilized, but the time it took was always growing and it wasn't until this year that he could finally consider Shanxi stable enough for him to take a break. 

Who knew that founding a nation would take that much work.

This would actually be his first vacation in ten years and he would be on leave for the next six months to recuperate and relax. Those thoughts were quickly dashed away once he remembered the last thing he was told before going to surgery.

When they told him that they were about to break treaties they had signed by studying the Tuningfork, he didn't know what to feel. He wanted to protest the decision considering what had happened to those who had tried before. Unfortunately, the decision had already been made, they would be way on their way to study it by the time he could do anything. He managed to assign someone that he could trust to watch over them at least.

He hadn't met her personally, but he had seen the recordings and she looked a little too eager for him. He didn't want everything they had worked for to disappear because someone got too enthusiastic and touched something they shouldn't have.

Jon did listen to her theories with interest though.

Humanity had come up with many ideas on ways to travel faster than light. In the end, only two ways of travel became viable and each of them had their own drawbacks. Warp-engines can only take you so far before it needs refuelling and communication between ships is impossible as long as it's in use. One could be out of contact for hours or weeks depending on how long the journey is. 

That you can't use them wherever you like and have to travel to specific points in space to activate it means that it's mostly used for exploration or short distances.

Worm Gates are the second way to travel. You can travel much further with the trip almost instantaneous. Its limitations came to the massive amount of power it took to open one, One Worm Gate is linked with another one and you can travel from one side of human space to the other,

The problem is that you can only link to one system at the time. That's why any nation has at least two Gates in a system to make sure that the trade always flow. The amount of Gates one system has is a good way to show how prosperous it is.

Shanxi only having one meant that they needed to build a second one if they wanted further growth.

The resources that building one needs are uncomfortably large for a small world like theirs. The resources they could have used are ones he made sure went into Shanxi as they sorely needed it to build up their infrastructure.

Now he wonders if he should have at the very least set some of it aside for a second Gate, maybe they would have hesitated to listen to the scientist's theories.

He was starting to get restless as the doctor had yet to come back after being called away. Jon needed to know if things had gone wrong, the only thing he could be certain of that it hadn't turned into the worst-case scenario since they were still alive.

Jon was close to standing up and finding out himself when the door finally opened to reveal his doctor and a second person. He gave a questioning stare to the doctor at seeing that the second person was from the military.

"I suppose you are wondering about our guest, she was actually the reason I was called away earlier. As for what she wants... it would be easier if she explained it herself." The soldier took that as her time to introduce herself.

"Sir, lieutenant Tefari reporting for duty." Now that he looked closer he could see the subtle glow from a hard light projector.

It surprised him as most AIs use physical bodies, his doctor was a good example. Doctor Edo's body looked almost perfectly human if you looked away from the blue lines in his skin that gave of a pulsing glow. That an AI was using a hard light projector and had joined the military this far from the Core systems was an oddity in itself.

He realized that he had let her stand at attention longer than necessary, he might not have recovered fully from the surgery yet.

"At ease Lieutenant. Could you explain why you came to me as I'm currently on leave?" 

"A situation has developed that requires all personnel to return to duty." They need everyone? The only reason they would recall everybody was if there was an invasion. 

"Is there an invasion?" It would make sense considering how isolated they would be with their only Gate shut down and located weeks away from the nearest inhabited system.

"Yes sir, there is currently a possible alien invasion at our doorstep." 

What?

The bizarre statement from the lieutenant, he almost thought of it as an elaborate joke, it was quickly proven true when he was given a datapad with all the relevant reports.

Three days ago they lost contact with the ships investigating the Tuningfork. At the same time, many of their ships around the system stopped working properly. Their sensors and communications stopped operating and the same went for basically anything else in the system.

Miraculously any systems on the planet or in orbit were spared from the malfunction.

It was only yesterday that they managed to get a visual on the Tuningfork. An alien fleet was parked there with the wreckages of their ships floating not far from them. Jon could only hope that the died a quick and painless death. It was pretty clear what happened from what the report showed him except for one thing.

"Is the report correct on this part, that they haven't moved towards in the last three days?" Why would they wait three whole days?

Did waiting for so long after the first attack makes sense from their perspective or did they have problems that needed time to solve?

"Yes, the only ship that is currently moving in our direction is heavily damaged and was leaking atmosphere according to the latest scans."

"The alien fleet hasn't tried to help them in any way?" If there similar they should at the very least sent a shuttle to take the crew.

"No, the damaged ship has been on a steady course towards Shanxi with no contact from the alien fleet." She sounded as confused as he did.

He has been on leave for a week and problems are already starting to appear.

"I see. Is that all?" He will have to find his uniform and arrange a meeting to strategize. 

"No, there is one more thing." She glowed a little brighter before it went to a normal level, at the same time he received a new file on the datapad. Opening it revealed a familiar face.

"Zaeed Massani has requested a meeting with you since the incident, he said that he is willing to lend his assistance." 

Jon finally saw something positive in this situation. A small world like theirs would have little chance of winning against a fleet that large.

But with Zaeed Massani here their chances of winning just went up.

* * *

Codex: Nations

Shanxi is a recently founded nation that was originally founded by the United Commonwealth as a prison colony.

Because of the colony's purpose as a place to send criminals, it's location is quite isolated. It would take weeks to travel there normally without the usage of a Worm Gate.

Eventually, the United Commonwealth's government elected a new leader who passed laws that made Shanxi not only a place to send criminals but also undesirables. What undesirables meant was up for the government, but the prison population quickly tripled after the law was passed and only grew after that. The colony rebelled eventually as the situation back home destabilized as the government became increasingly oppressive. A civil war emerged in the United Commonwealth which made it much easier for Shanxi to become its own nation.

Today Shanxi stands as its own nation with a population of seventeen million with its own government. Its military is strong enough to ward of weaker pirate attack and is far enough away that stronger pirates don't bother it. Shanxi is a proud member of the United Nations and uses its presence to support any people that were once oppressed as they were.

Many people in the current government and the military are either former prisoners or guards that rebelled with them. General Jon Grissom is a person that many people consider one of the main reasons that the rebellion succeeded.


	4. Chapter 4

Humanity has found intelligent alien life and Zaeed Massani would be able to say he was there when it happened.

He was at the very least in the same system and wasn't assigned to the team that discovered them, he would most likely be dead if he was. 

He was also asleep at the time.

The most important thing is that there is another form of intelligent life out there that isn't dead or artificial and they are hostile. Since in the infinite expanse of space that is the universe, the first one they meet turns out to be hostile.

He owes Peregrini so much money now. The one time he tries to be positive and the universe is out to prove him wrong! 

The last few days have been tiresome with questions from his subordinates neverending and always with the same question that boils down to what they are supposed to do now. He has no answer to that as he doesn't know either.

Any request from information from the government is met with the response that things are being taken care of. The friends he has on the inside tells him that they don't know what to do.

He decided that he needed some time alone to think and went to the best place for it.

It was only a short ride up the space elevator with a lot of space in his cabin as evacuations of civilians had started only a few hours ago. It was his most peaceful trip up in a long time if the reason for it wasn't an alien invasion he would have wished it happened more often.

The gravity lessening the further they climbed was the only sign that showed how high up they were. It was an older model that was meant for cargo so the many comforts that would usually be in a space elevator weren't here. It was one of the biggest signs of what the planet was once used for and the only reason it still stood was because of its usefulness. 

The door opened before his mind could go to a darker place, he would rather not remember the first time he had to use them.

The few passengers that rode the elevator started to float out with him at the rear. He used the railings that had been set up to get to a specific place in the station, one that was in the opposite direction of everyone else.

The corridor got smaller and looked a lot less new with almost no traffic except for the rare maintenance droid that flew past him. Eventually, he got to his destination.

The door was large, rusty and the sign that had indicated what the place had been was replaced long ago with 'Shipyard 5'. It's a better name than 'Prisoner Arrival' at least.

The door opened into an airlock with the suits need to go into vacuum prepared. They were clunky and not as sleek as what would normally be used on the shipyards back home, it made him appreciate that his armour could be used in a vacuum as well. He did not have time to force himself into one of those suits.

His helmet put on and the airlock had equalized with the environment outside, he was ready for a spacewalk.

The shipyard was entirely empty as it was rarely used and one could clearly see space from here. The reason he came he wasn't only for the quiet, but it was also the only shipyard that faced Shanxi.

He activated his magnetic boots and simply stood there. That was how he stood for who knows how long as he gazed at Shanxi with his only purpose to lose himself in its beauty. He always went here every time he was sent to Shanxi and felt stressed, it was a good way to clear one's head.

It was only when his sensors alerted him that another person had entered that he stopped and started to give his attention to the new arrival.

He wore the same type of suit as he, but that was where the similarities ended. Zaeed's suit was bulky with a purple tint, two logos were painted on his left shoulder. One was the flag of the Union and the other was a rhino with a white background. It had numerous scratches and dents from previous battles.

The other person's suit was sleek and tinted grey, it looked almost completely new if it wasn't for the few dents one could see if one observed carefully. He had the same flag on his left shoulder, but the rhino had been replaced with a dolphin on a red background.

He found out who it was when he received a request to open a channel and read the name of the sender.

"Shepard! I didn't think that you would be on Shanxi."

"I got assigned to a group that needed to go here and they forgot about the whole maintenance thing, so we're stuck here." He chuckled. "I would have called it a vacation if it wasn't for the aliens." 

Zaeed couldn't see his face because of the mask, but he was certain that there was a smile behind it. 

They started to catch up with some small talk, mostly about previous battles and their personal lives. Shepard as per usual talked only about his personal life, which mostly revolves around his family.

"You should see them more often." And it always came back to that. Apparently, when someone appoints you as the godfather to their children it means you have to visit them as often as possible.

"I do. I send messages on text, audio and video."

"And when was the last time you visited them physically? You know how much they like you and it's starting to get tiring that I have to go through the same questions every holiday. 'When is Zaeed coming', 'does he not like to be here' and 'why did he only give Jane a knife?'" 

A pause. 

"Why did you only give Jane a sword anyway?"

"I didn't think that John would want one too, he's shown more interest towards spaceships than weapons when I asked him." 

"kids be like that sometimes. By the way, when will I meet a Mrs Mas-" Zaeed couldn't press the alert on his HUD fast enough to escape this conversation.

He skimmed through the message until he realized who it was from and read it more thoroughly.

That he had gone quiet so suddenly, fortunately, made Shepard abandon that line of questioning for now.

"Is there something wrong?"

"General Jon Grissom has called for a strategy meeting and would like for me to attend." It hasn't even gone a day since the surgery and he's already taken charge.

"Would it be possible for me to participate?" He waited for him to elaborate even if he had already sent the request for Shepard to come too.

"The reason I'm here in the first place was as security for the Arcan Nomadic fleet. Some complications have happened and I need to tell the general."

The request had been answered and accepted.

"Let's go, you can explain to me the full situation on our way there.

* * *

Codex: Nations

The Union or the Union of Tellaren Systems, if you want to use its full name, is both young and old in its founding.

The Union was founded only fifty years ago and consist of a combined population of 75 million inhabitants spread over dozens of planets and five systems. The planet it consists of were planets that were colonized in the early years of the Expansion which meant that little care was put into what type of resources the planet had. The most important back then was that it had space that Earth could use to ease its overpopulation.

This meant that many of those planets either had a hostile environment and resources that were not easy to extract. In the later years, it led to poor development and the people there had to find some way to fix this. Eventually, they used the only thing they had an abundance of and that was people trained to survive in hostile environments. 

They trained up small military units that they would lend out to other nations for resources. Planets or systems with the same difficulties started doing the same and they eventually formed the Union.

They are one of the biggest contributors to the United Nations Peacekeepers and are known to give their support to newly independent nations.


	5. Chapter 5

Zaeed had been silent ever since Shepard told him about the situation. He broke the silence once the elevator doors opened once again, they were planetside and hurried to their destination.

"You are absolutely certain of this?" 

"Yes," Shepard answered immediately. "I have confirmed it with the right people and a tragedy will happen if nothing is done."

They went into silence once more.

It wasn't the first time Zaeed had asked that question and its answer didn't change. That a nomadic fleet would arrive in only two months had worsened an already complicated situation.

That it was the Arken Nomadic Fleet made it even worse.

Known as the biggest nomadic fleet with ten Colony-class ships and enough ships to protect them, he might have thought of it as a good thing that they would come here. The unfortunate part is that when they warped into the system they would have no knowledge of the hostile ships. 

A Colony-class ship was a mighty vessel, but it's meant for civilian use and to be kept far away from the war zone that Shanxi would turn into by the time they get here.

If the aliens managed to get a good shot in then it would quickly turn into a massacre.

He didn't want that to happen and sped up once more into something close to a sprint. Shepard was right behind him and easily kept up as they sprinted the nearest transport station. The meeting was in the capital which was further north and had little time.

The flight to the planetary capital Taizhou felt like it took hours when it took only a few minutes to get there. The faster they got the information to the higher-ups, the faster they could make a plan. He had sent a message, but no answer has been sent back.

Luckily, they managed to get permission to land at the military base where the meeting was and saved a lot of time. 

Their escort arrived shortly after they landed and led them to general Grissom. The escort didn't say much on the way there and left as soon as he had led them to the office, he wasn't the only one that had little time to talk. On their way here they had observed dozen of people in uniform that hurried from place to place. 

One particularly unobservant one that was with their datapad had almost crashed into him. 

The guards that were stationed in front of the door let them in after their identities were verified and Zaeed got the first good look of Jon in days. He hadn't worried much about the surgery, but he was supposed to have at least a few days in bed to recover. 

"You are a bit earlier than expected Zaeed." One of his oldest friends commented when the door opened. "There's no need for formalities either, I'm not your commanding officer."

Zaeed though that he referred to him first, but a look back showed that Shepard stood at full attention. 

"I know that sir. I just wanted to properly show my respect to a hero."

"I'm no hero. The liberation of Shanxi was only possible through the hard work and sacrifice of everyone involved." His tight expression as he said that was only visible to those who had known him for a long time. 

He never liked it when people called him a hero, Zaeed needed to have a talk with Shepard after this. 

"That's not why I called you here anyway, I read your message about the Arken Fleet and their arrival and I have some questions" He turned to Shepard. "Would you be able to answer them?"

"I learned as much as I could of the situation before I came here. What do you need to know?"

"The message said that you had no way to contact them at the moment, right?" Shepard nodded. "Do you have any other way to contact them?"

"No, communications went down after the surge and we were far from Shanxi when it happened so a lot of it malfunctioned. We can fix some of it in time, but there's no way for us to fix it fast enough with the few people we have." He grimaced. "A lot was broken during the surge."

"So you need technicians to help you, people who are currently busy with fixing everything else that was broken?"

"Yes that is what I'm asking for and we will understand if you don't have the resources to spare." Shepard looked like he was prepared for Jon to deny his request.

Zaeed knew better as he might not like that he was called a hero, but there was a reason so many considered him the main reason they managed to liberate Shanxi. When they first founded the Resistance they had few resources, personnel and weapons. They probably would have lost their first battle and their small rebellion crushed, but he made it work. 

General Jon Grissom turned a small band of escaped prisoners into an army, if he didn't have a solution to this problem then Zaeed didn't know what they would do.

That he hadn't said no yet showed that. 

"I could spare twelve able-bodied personnel to you, they are technically busy but what you ask of me is more important." Zaeed almost laughed out loud at the surprised expression on Shepard's face. "Is there something wrong?"

"No, I'm just surprised you accepted my request. I thought you might have more important things to use them for."

"I do, but if they manage to fic it in time then we would also be able to call for help. It might have been a few centuries since they were made, but the Radislaw Protocol should still work. We have alre-" An alarm interrupted him before a small hologram of a man in uniform appeared.

"I'm sorry to interrupt general, but everyone you have asked for is here. Several of them have already asked to start the meeting early, what should I tell them?"

"Youcan tell them I'm on my way." The hologram bowed before it disappeared and Jon stood up. "We can continue our conversation once we're there, it will be one of several topics we have to discuss."

Zaeed and Shepard were led out of the office by Jon, one of the guards that stood in front of the door followed them down the corridor. 

"While we walk there we could talk about other things that don't relate to the crisis we find ourselves in." He turned to a Zaeed with a grin. "Have you found anyone special to share your life with Zaeed? You always used to brag about how you smooth you were with the ladies back then even with your many failures."

Zaeed could only grimace as Jon tried to brighten the mood with embarrassing stories about him. The only way this could be worse...

"Oh really, what were those?" Said Shepard with a grin of his own.

Thought about how to get back at them later was the only thing that distracted him from the embarrassing stories of his youth. 

They couldn't get to the meeting fast enough. 

* * *

Codex: Nations

During the Great Expansion as the millions of people needed to be transported to new worlds, a new type of ship was designed.

The earliest Ark-class ships were designed to transport thousands of people at once to newly set up colonies. They needed to operate efficiently and at all times which meant that they needed a permanent crew. The crew would live on the ships as they went back and forth between Earth and other worlds.

Their living quarters were made as comfortable as possible as they would be expected to stay on the ship for years before they could leave. The constant back and forth took about two decades before the tempo slowed down and the crew was finally allowed to have a break.

Some used the time to visit the planets they had only seen from space before.

Many people had not felt proper gravity in years by that time and many decided to continue their life on the ships. Many preferred it, the Reclamation project had only just begun and the clean environment of the ships was preferred over the heavily polluted Earth. Other people felt trapped whenever they had to go back to normal gravity, only a small minority didn't return to the ships. Some of the ships eventually got permission to expand their living quarters and have kids as the need for the Arc-class ships got smaller. 

Eventually, the people on the ships struck a deal with their respective governments for greater independence. The deal varied from scouting, research or mining depending on the ship. 

The first nomadic fleet was founded a few years after that with the Arc-class ship 'Arken' as the flagship. 

Today there are more than twenty different fleets in varying sizes with the biggest and most populous being the Arken Nomadic Fleet.


End file.
